SSC Ultimate Aero: the grudge match

This is supercar maker SSC’s latest weapon in an ongoing speed war. It wants to reclaim the world record from the Veyron SS…

It was supercar-generic on the outside. The
interior was frankly a bit kit-car. Shelby is candid: "I designed it. The
aerodynamics were much the most important thing to me, and the appearance was
only semi-important... and the interior was unimportant." He's a self-professed
control freak, but in this case he now admits this was a crushing error in the
eyes of actual customers. Luckily a hotshot designer had just become available.

Jason Castriota has one of the absolute
premier-league supercar design CVs. An
Italian-American who made his name in the former country and has since set up a
design practice in the latter, he seemed a perfect fit. He knew the market for
supercars, and he knew the super-expensive end of it through working with
owners on multi-million-pound one-off commissions. He was also passionately
interested in aerodynamics.